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techniques of cut-paper appliqué in regards to scrapbook-making.
    “Pinking shears are essential,” she murmurs sleepily.
    I get so wrapped up in my picture that eventually I don’t even hear Poppy’s murmurings. After a bit, when I go to switch colors for shading, it hits me that it’s been a while since we came out here.
    What could be taking Biggie so long?
    I glance over at Poppy’s hammock just in time to see her roll over. She makes a sound that’s probably a snore but sounds more like
sqwaaaaaathrsk.
    I reach over and jostle her gently. “Little dream-weaver…it’s time to wake….”
    Poppy sits up with a start. “Crinkle with a paper-crimper!”
    When she sees me grinning at her, she wrinkles her nose and sits up. “Is Biggie ready for us?”
    I raise one shoulder. “I don’t know, but it’s been some time. Think we should go check on him?”
    She yawns and stretches. “But it’s so nice in the sunshine. Let’s give him five more minutes.” She blinks over at my lap. “Were you drawing?”
    I turn the sketchbook around so she can see the picture I drew of her rocking away in the hammock. Her mouth forms a little O
.
    “You are a whiz with those pencils, Harper!”
    I shrug. “Thanks! It’s funny, I can see what the finished product will look like in my head. So I just try to get what I put on the paper to match up with what I see in my mind’s eye.”
    “So cool,” Poppy says, gesturing for me to pass her the picture so she can inspect it more closely. I hand it over.
    “Is it like that for you? With your scrapbooking?”
    Poppy nods. “Sometimes. But it’s also fun to experiment. A lot of the time I won’t even let myself think about the end result, and I just play and try different things without any goal in mind.”
    I scratch my chin. “How do you know what you’ll end up with will be any good?”
    “If it feels good doing something, that’s all that matters.”
    “I think one of the things that’s stressing me out about the gallery opening is that I don’t have that end vision in my mind’s eye. I didn’t realize how much the end result affects my overall creative process. I feel like if I could just form that picture in my head of what the gala should look like, I’d be able to figure out how to get there. It makes me so nervous that the opening exhibit is relying on my ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ plan.”
    Poppy nods sympathetically. “I can see where it would be super hard to do things differently than you’re used to. But maybe that’s a good thing. Besides, I’ve watched you paint. You do this—”
    Poppy hops up and whips her hair around so her hammock gets absorbed into a new hairstyle. She stands on the branch next to me and swishes her hand in the air like she’s painting a canvas. Then she steps back, rubs her chin, and steps forward again to paint one small stroke. She steps back, tilts her head and rubs her chin, and steps forward to add another swirl.
    I laugh. “That’s not what I look like.”
    “Totally is,” she insists, plopping down next to me on the branch and matching her swinging leg motions to mine. “So even with your perfect vision, you still tweak your art a bunch, right?”
    “Yes.” I have to admit: I tweak it a
lot.
A painting of mine can look finished to anyone else for weeks before
I
finally declare it done. “Which is probably another reason this is stressful. With my art, I can revise, paint over a spot, adjust a color or a line. With this opening gala, I only get one shot to have everything be perfect.”
    Suddenly, I’m not feeling so bad that I’ve been a stress case over this. How could I not be?
    “Or else?” Poppy asks casually. Her eyes are on the carpet of vivid flowers on the ground, but she nudges my shoulder to let me know she’s right here in this conversation.
    “What do you mean, ‘or else’?” I ask.
    Poppy twists her ankle around mine so our legs are swinging together. “You keep talking about